This was kind of a drill for "Die Brücke", the masterpiece coming some 4 years later. Several young boys have volunteered to fight with the remains of the German Army on the Eastern Front and their mothers take on a desperate journey to get them back home. This is told in black and white, with only small doses of softening and taking stand for the German cause, basically a human drama of motherly uncompromising love, officers and generals torn between duty and human common sense and boys, who feel like deserters, if they would be forced to be boys again. And also a little love story between of the widowed mothers and an Officer. Everything is there, dominating performances by Therese Giehse and Bernhard Wicki, but just a warm-up for the much more focused and uncompromising Masterpiece to follow.

This engaging movie is a mixed bag. There is the seed of a great movie to be made in this patchy one. The intriguing story of six women heading to the Russian front to rescue their teenage sons, who've run away from school to enlist for the Fatherland, deserves better telling. Some fine performances are mixed with some pretty dreadful ones. Some great lines are mixed with some dreadful clichés. The cinematography was superb throughout. The star performance is that of Therese Giehse. How did she not have a wider fame outside of Germany? Bernhard Wicki, who does pretty well, appears interestingly in the later movie, "Paris, Texas."